IB Manager

IB Manager

The IB Manager is integrated into Wealth-Lab’s Tool menu. You won’t need to visit this dialog often after you’ve got things running.

Use the IB Manager to:

activate your trial/subscriber licenses

identify the TWS connection settings

configure default contract settings

open Symlo.txt (more below) in your default text editor

Set up

After installing the IBProvider.dll and config files, start TWS and open IB Manager in Wealth-Lab.

Login to the IB TWS,and then…

Open Wealth-Lab Developer

Click Tools | IB Manager

Connection Settings

Socket Port (Default: 7496)
– Make the port number the same as the one in your TWS API Configuration.

Host (Default: 127.0.0.1)
– Most of us will connect to TWS running on the same machine, so don’t change the local host setting unless you know what this does.

Contract Defaults

You know how whenever you enter a symbol in TWS that you have to select the one you want from a list? That’s because the same symbol can be used for different instruments on different exchanges and traded in different currencies. IBProvider needs to identify a symbol contract precisely, but it would be a royal pain to do this for every symbol that you’re interested in. As a shortcut to defining every contract, specify the Security Type, Exchange, and Currency for symbols that you’re likely to use in Wealth-Lab.

For U.S. stocks, use the default settings: STK, SMART, USD. If you trade German stocks, you might enter STK, IBIS, EUR. For contracts on other exchanges or that need additional specifying information, you need to add an entry in the symlo.txt file.

Symlo.txt

If you traded with IB in the “old days” with WLD 4, you’ll recognize symlo.txt. Okay, I stole the file name and format and didn’t see any reason to change it. After all, I use it for the same purpose.

Click the “Open Symlo.txt in text editor” button to see the copy of symlo.txt that IBProvider automatically installed in your Wealth-Lab User Data folder. It’s pretty self-explanatory and there are several entries to serve as examples. While using Wealth-Lab, you can edit and save entries, and they will be used immediately by IBProvider without the need to restart.

Enable Market On Open (Default: unchecked)

Check this option so that market orders placed at least 10 minutes before the Market Opening Time* are entered as MKT OPG, which is MOO. An order marked this way allows it orders to participate in the opening auction of the primary market. For example, orders for U.S. stocks placed between 0920 ET and 1600 ET are normal MKT DAY order, whereas orders placed at any other time (including weekends and holidays) will be MKT OPG if this MOO option is checked.

* Configure the Market Opening Time for your markets in the Market Manager with respect to the TWS Time Zone (see below)

Data Settings – TWS Time Zone

Intraday charting uses the TWS Time Zone. IB Support told me that there’s no way (using the TWS API) to replicate IB’s Chart Time Options, which shows intraday charts in the market’s time zone by default. The workaround is to configure TWS with the timezone of the markets that you’re most interested in. Do this by following these steps:

Open the TWS Login dialog

Click the “Show all fields” hyperlink (lower left corner of the dialog)

Click the Time Zone… button and choose the time zone

Continue the login as normal.The time zone that you selected will now be used for charting, and it’s saved for future logins.

In IB Manager, select the time zone that most alike the one you selected as the TWS Time Zone. If you get this wrong, streaming charts will not work correctly.

Limit Intraday Data (Default: checked)

Gathering backfill from IB takes a LOT of time. If this option is not checked, requesting the first 1-minute chart is likely to take more than 10 minutes. It’s an arduous process because several months of backfill is requested has to be requested in a long series of multiple requests. If you don’t have a real data provider for backtesting, then you might want to “bite the bullet” and collect data, which currently has to be done one chart at a time since IBProvider is not enabled in WLD’s Data Manager. (For a workaround, turn on on-demand data and perform a backtest on your dataset using a simple strategy.)

With this option checked, only about 2 or 3 weeks of backfill will be requested for intraday stock instruments on the first request. Thereafter, IBProvider will keep the cache updated from the last date downloaded.

Allow 0 Volume Bars (Default: unchecked)

Chart requests will cache all the data returned by IB, even bars where no trading occurs. Some bars may have open, high, low, and close all equal to the same price, but with volume = 0. You can include these zero volume bars in a Wealth-Lab chart by checking this option. Note that this option is not required for Cash markets for which volume is not reported.

Activate IBProvider

Click this button to enter your name, email, and activation code that you received in email for your trial or annual subscription. If activation is successful, it will say that in the status bar. You need to restart Wealth-Lab only after this initial activation.

Select IB as Streaming Data Provider in Wealth-Lab

If you want to use IBProvider for streaming quotes and charts, don’t forget to select it in the Streaming Data Preferences.